Tag Archives: entrepreneurship

EarthLink’s own Mike Toplisek, Executive Vice President of Products and Marketing, was interviewed recently by influential author, entrepreneur and technology consultant Sramana Mitra as part of her ’Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing’ series focused on the strategies of major companies around cloud computing and SaaS in an effort to provide both historical perspectives and the outlook for the market. Mitra is the founder of the One Million by One Million global initiative and the author of VisionIndia 2020 among other several other books demystifying entrepreneurship.

Toplisek is particularly interested in focusing on how IT and cloud services offer entrepreneurs a leg up, enabling start-ups to more rapidly and nimbly enter the marketplace. The following is an excerpt from his fascinating discussion with Mitra.

“It’s about empowerment. We’re driving more toward that. We have a business with an existing cost structure that enables us to provide human touch as needed. We’ll service our customers in the way that they want to be serviced, but more and more, the way they want to be serviced is by being empowered to make the changes without having to deal with a human touch. That is where most of our investment and research and development are going, into that MyLink™ control panel . . . it also enables businesses to compete and allows them to compete more fiercely. I think it’s helping to foster an environment that’ll be stronger than ever for startup businesses and small businesses to grow because of all of this technology.” – Mike Toplisek, EarthLink Executive Vice President of Products and Marketing